OKX market data shows that ETH has broken through $2,300 and is currently trading at $2,301. The 24-hour gain is 10.30%. It hit a high of $2,335. BTC is approaching $70,000 and is currently trading at $69,525. The 24-hour gain is 1.41%, with a peak of $69,922. CoinGlass data shows that in the past 4 hours, liquidations across the entire network totaled approximately $792 million: about $735 million from short liquidations and about $57.52 million from long liquidations.
Wu Xuan learned that at an event at the White House where U.S. President Trump met with technology industry leaders, CFTC Chairman Mike Selig approved this May the first “true” Bitcoin perpetual futures contract to be launched on an exchange registered with the CFTC, and he is still working to bring Hyperliquid into the U.S. market in a fully compliant and lawful manner. Or, affected by this news, HYPE briefly rose from around $62 to $72.3, an increase of about 16%.
According to Bloomberg, after OKX’s business Claude account was briefly suspended in early August, the company has banned Hong Kong employees and employees who go through China from using Anthropic’s Claude; however, the company account has since been restored. OKX said that some Hong Kong employees’ prior usage may not have fully complied with Anthropic’s regional access policies. Therefore, it will, as required, restrict Hong Kong employees’ use of Claude and route related AI requests to other models. Anthropic’s policies currently do not allow the use of Claude in mainland China and Hong Kong. OKX previously encouraged employees to use AI at work and said it has incorporated relevant capabilities into performance evaluations. The company stated that its monthly spending with several major leading AI model providers is about US$6 million to US$8 million.
Encryption industry super PAC Fairshake and its affiliated organizations, Protect Progress, invested more than $2 million in Florida’s Democratic primary, trying to prevent Oliver Gilbert from winning, but ultimately failed; its ads were criticized for using forged Miami Herald headlines. Fairshake said that of the five candidates it backed this week in Florida, Alaska, and Wyoming, four won their primaries, bringing its record in this cycle to 49 wins out of 53 congressional primary contests. Fairshake also backs both Republican and Democratic candidates in this cycle, intervening in elections through independent advertising rather than directly running for office. (CoinDesk)
X Layer officially announced the launch of an RWA ecosystem liquidity incentive program, with a total incentive pool of USD 5 million. This incentive will be rolled out in multiple rounds. The first round will provide USD 300,000 in liquidity incentives, covering trading pairs between RWA and stablecoins, as well as trading pairs between RWA and ecosystem tokens.
Fed July meeting minutes: Inflation risks remain skewed to the upside; some officials support a rate hike; concerns about financial stability from AI’s elevated valuations and leveraged financing
Wu says it has learned that minutes from the Federal Reserve’s July meeting show that participants generally believe inflation remains above the 2% target, and risks are tilted to the upside. Ongoing Middle East conflict, tariffs, and demand pressures stemming from AI investment may make inflation more persistent. The labor market overall remains stable, and economic activity continues to expand steadily, supported mainly by AI-related investment and consumption. Most participants supported maintaining the current target range for the federal funds rate, but several argued for a 25-basis-point rate hike, saying price pressures are still fairly broad. Many participants said that if inflation does not continue to decline further, tighter monetary policy may be needed; some participants believe current financial conditions are still not sufficient to bring inflation back to 2%. The minutes also noted that rapid expansion of AI infrastructure has increased financial stability risks by raising valuations and expanding leverage-based financing. If markets were to cut back expectations for long-term profitability in the AI sector, it could trigger a broad re-pricing of asset prices and tighten financial conditions.
Injective, through its affiliate Injective Institutional Services, has registered with the SEC as a transfer agent, enabling it to legally maintain records of holders of tokenized securities, handle all ownership changes, distributions, and corporate actions, among other matters. Injective states that this move further extends its tokenization business from asset issuance and trading into a regulated securities infrastructure, for recording the legal ownership and transfer of tokenized securities. Injective previously launched pre-IPO perpetual contracts, including exposure to non-listed companies such as OpenAI; on the same day, its native token INJ rose by about 8%, with a market value of approximately $450 million. (TheBlcok)
Wu Says has learned that the CFTC announced that it has reached a final enforcement settlement with former Alameda CEO Caroline Ellison and with Alameda and FTX co-founder Gary Wang. The court ordered that both individuals continue to cooperate with the CFTC’s investigation and that Ellison be subject to a 5-year trading ban and a 10-year registration ban, while Wang be subject to a 5-year trading ban and an 8-year registration ban. The terms run from the date the initial consent order took effect in early 2022. The CFTC is not seeking compensation, disgorgement, or civil penalties at this time, in part because the two provided substantial cooperation in the FTX-related investigations and criminal case, and because they have already jointly assumed a criminal forfeiture responsibility of $11.02 billion.
According to crypto journalist Eleanor Terrett, at the SALT Conference the head of the U.S. Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) said that compared with the Biden administration, the volume of applications for digital-asset-related charters has increased by about eightfold, and he criticized the previous administration’s risk-eradication-oriented regulatory approach. The OCC expects to complete the final rulemaking related to the GENIUS Act by November and will adjust the rules based on feedback from the crypto industry.
Rapid7 discloses Operation ASTERIX: attackers use AI to develop crypto-phishing tools and malicious wallet apps
Wu says he learned that network security company Rapid7 disclosed an encryption scam operation called Operation ASTERIX. Researchers found servers it exposed due to misconfiguration, containing around 885,000 phone numbers, exchange account verification tools, phishing panels, auto-dialing scripts, and forged Trezor, Ledger, and Exodus wallet applications. The attackers first bulk-check whether the phone numbers are linked to accounts on platforms such as CryptoCom and Kraken—for example, among 316,000 German numbers, they confirmed 43,066 CryptoCom accounts, for a hit rate of about 13.6%—then use information such as names, email addresses, and regions to filter targets, and impersonate customer support via phishing emails and phone calls. They prompt users to install forged wallets and enter recovery phrases, and the related data is then exfiltrated via Telegram.
Standard Chartered’s Geoff Kendrick: Bitcoin could reach $100,000 by year-end; U.S. Treasury expands long-term Treasury buybacks
Standard Chartered Bank’s digital asset research head Geoff Kendrick said that Bitcoin could rise to $100,000 by the end of 2026 and sees $65,500 as a key technical level. If it continues to break above this level, it could indicate that the low point of this cycle has already been formed. He noted that the U.S. Department of the Treasury announced an increase in the maximum single-liquidity support for buybacks of U.S. Treasuries in the 10- to 20-year and 20- to 30-year maturities from $2 billion to at least $4 billion. The expanded repurchases will be implemented from September 9 to November 4, helping to ease financial conditions pressures caused by rising long-term Treasury yields. After the news was released, long-term U.S. Treasury yields fell, and Bitcoin briefly climbed more than 6% to nearly $69,000—its highest level since early June. (Cointelegraph)
Nethermind exits the LayerZero DVN, migrating its cross-chain business to Chainlink
Ethereum engineering firm Nethermind has announced that it is ending its operation of a decentralized validation network (DVN) on LayerZero and migrating its cross-chain business to Chainlink. Nethermind will participate in Chainlink CCIP and Data Feeds as a node operator and technology provider, and will offer engineering tools, infrastructure, and integration support. The change came after the Kelp DAO rsETH cross-chain bridge was attacked in April and lost approximately $292 million; since then, several other companies have also shifted from LayerZero to Chainlink. However, Nethermind did not say whether the migration was triggered by that incident, nor did it disclose any specific technical issues with LayerZero or the time frame for completing the migration. (The Block)
OKX market data shows that BTC has broken above $66,000 and is currently trading at $66,419, with a 24-hour increase of 2.6%. ETH has broken above $2,000 and is currently trading at $2,011, with a 24-hour increase of 5.3%. CoinGlass data shows that in the past 24 hours, total liquidations across the whole network were approximately $549 million, including liquidations on long positions of approximately $109 million and liquidations on short positions of approximately $439 million. Globally, 78,762 people were liquidated. The largest single liquidation order occurred on Hyperliquid - BTC-USD, valued at $18.7344 million.
Wu Shuo learned that Grayscale has filed with the U.S. SEC the fourth amendment to the registration statement for the Grayscale Zcash Trust (ZEC). The plan is to rename the trust after the registration statement becomes effective and to list it on the NYSE Arca under the ticker “ZCSH.” The filing discloses that DCG International Investments Ltd., a subsidiary of Digital Currency Group (DCG), is in discussions with the initiator to subscribe for the trust’s shares with approximately 200,000 ZEC. However, no binding agreement has been formed for the arrangement yet, and the final subscription quantity may be changed or canceled.
According to The Wall Street Journal, Nasdaq-listed ZeroStack, focused on decentralized AI, announced that it has reached a definitive transaction agreement with Puple AI and Blockcat. The latter two will inject a total value of $1 billion worth of 925,925,926 MemeCore (M) tokens into ZeroStack in exchange for 3.5 million shares of common stock and pre-funding warrants to purchase up to 36,198,293 shares of common stock. The subscription price is $25.19 per share. Shares underlying the warrants must be issued after shareholders approve them in accordance with Nasdaq Listing Rule 5635. The applicable shares’ lock-up period is up to 10 years.
Data: AI-related U.S. stocks broadly fall during the trading session; the sector’s average drop is 2.32%
According to Bitget market data, during the U.S. trading session, AI-related stocks saw a clear collective drop. Of the 7 monitored stocks, 6 declined. The sector’s equal-weight average fell 2.32%, with the median down 1.94%. In the same period, QQQ rose 0.35%, and the AI sector underperformed QQQ by 2.67 percentage points. The sector’s decline was at about the 61st percentile in the past year for moves in the same direction, and relative to QQQ it was at about the 81st percentile for the past year in the same direction. Among them, Applied Optoelectronics (AAOI) fell 9.35%, Broadcom (AVGO) fell 3.50%, AMD (AMD) fell 2.00%, Micron Technology (MU) fell 1.94%, NVIDIA (NVDA) rose 0.98%, TSMC (TSM) fell 0.37%, and SK Hynix (SKHY) fell 0.09%.
Ethena and digital asset prime broker FalconX announced a $1 billion secured custody financing arrangement, using the assets behind USDe to support institutional overcollateralized lending. The loan proceeds will be used for trading strategies, corporate treasury management, and payments. Under the arrangement, FalconX will be responsible for initiating and servicing the loans and managing the collateral; the collateral will be held by a qualified third-party custodian, and Ethena will have a first-priority secured interest in the relevant assets. The move is intended to help Ethena reduce reliance on perpetual contract funding rate income and expand the sources of yield for USDe-supported assets. (CoinDesk)
Wu Shuo learned that encrypted lending service provider Antalpha released unaudited financial data for the second quarter of 2026. Revenue was US$12.2 million, down 28% year over year; net loss attributable to Antalpha was US$12.5 million, compared with a net profit of US$0.7 million in the same period last year. The main factor was fair value losses on XAUt and XAUE held by Aurelion. In the same period, the total loan value facilitated by the company was US$1.35 billion, down 34% year over year. Antalpha expects revenue for the third quarter of 2026 to be between US$10.0 million and US$12.0 million.
Wu Shuo learned that Arthur Hayes posted on X that the FLOP whitepaper has not been released yet because the team is still communicating with stakeholders to refine its technical design and tokenomics model. It is expected that starting next week, it will publish a concise infographic including the tokenomics model. Previously, Hayes announced that he would lead Flop Labs, saying that Flop Network is geared toward the AI Agent economy, and that FLOP will be used to pay for computing resources and network services.
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